To Not Know -Then To Know - Then To Not Know Again!

Part of the legal defense used by Paul Hill, the convicted murderer of a Florida abortion doctor and his escort, was justifiable homicide — his killings were justified because “God told me to do it.” It seems that Hill was one hundred percent convinced that all abortions are murder and that, therefore, all doctors performing abortions are killers that deserve to die.

The rationale of believing that all abortions are murder in the eyes of a God who says, “Thou shalt not kill,” and then concluding that that same God would order the killing of the doctor who performed the abortion, eludes me. In any event, my exposure to the thinking and conduct of this particular “born-again” Christian, as well as to comments made by various observers on both sides of the abortion issue, has caused me to re-evaluate my personal understanding of Christian liberty and responsibility as well as how one can determine the will of God in a given situation.

Is there a specific Scriptural answer for every theological and ethical question with which we are confronted (such as capital punishment, birth control, female priests and pastors, the proper day for Sabbath observance, etc.)? Can anyone objectively and categorically know the will of God concerning the various decisions which face all of us every day - especially in the many debatable areas of theology and personal conduct? Will we ever be delivered from the questioning, the doubts, the conflicts and the attendant anguish which are a part of all those questions and their answers?

My specific answers to the three questions are simple and consistent: No, No and No. No, the Bible was not written to be an objective “how to” manual, though it is a helpful guide to steer us in reaching personal decisions. No, the will of God cannot be cataloged and objectively determined by one person for everyone else. And No, in this life we will never be delivered from the anguish of “not knowing”.

For me, the apostle Paul gives a partial answer to these questions - at least with respect to debatable areas of Christian conduct - when he says in Romans 14:5, “Everyone should be fully convinced in his own mind.” Granted, Paul was talking primarily about whether a particular day of the week should be revered more than any other, but based on the general tenor of this chapter on Christian liberty, I would assume Paul believed that only subjective personal conviction and not objective is the proper basis for all such decisions. We were not meant to live by the letter of the law -but by the Spirit.
It seems that “not knowing” is a part of the human condition. I continue to be amazed at how many U. S. Supreme Court decisions are made on a 5 to 4 vote. Time and time again, one swing vote could change the outcome of monumental decisions which effect the lives of millions. It’s not just the closeness of these decisions that amazes me, but the fact that some of the best informed, best trained and most experienced jurists in the world come up with so many decisions that are separated by only one vote. Change one member of the Court from liberal to conservative, or vice versa, and the law of the land goes in a different direction. How can anyone dogmatically say, “1 know,” and then make it even worse by adding, “And if you conclude differently, you are wrong”?

Jesus challenged the “gnostics” (knowers) of all ages with these words: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. . . [but] you are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:39). There are many “Christian gnostics” today who continue to look at the letter of Scripture for their answers and their spiritual life, instead of coming to the Spirit of Christ that dwells within them and trusting by faith that He will lead them into all truth.
In this day of computers and CD laser disks with gigabytes of information on them, it is probably just a matter of time before some great thinker comes up with a “Will Of God” CD disk. Punch in your problem and out comes the “godly” solution!

I have always been a “thinker”, one who wants to reason out answers to everything. God has wired me this way in the “thinker-feeler-doer” aspects of the mind. It is not that I am unemotional or inactive, but I primarily want to “know” everything about a situation before I feel anything about it, or act on it.

It took me until about age thirty-five to come to the understanding that Christianity is not an objective “religion” about God but rather a subjective “relationship” with God. I have come to see a cycle in all human experience with this business of “knowledge”.

We come into the world separated from God through the sin of our first parents in the Garden - we come in NOT-KNOWING God. Of course, God has placed a conscience in us and He deals with us through this conscience to bring us to a knowledge of Himself. We begin the process of KNOWING. Our parental guidance, education, situations of life increase our KNOWING. God deals with us in such ways as to draw us to a knowledge of Jesus Christ and the acceptance of Him as Savior and Redeemer. So we become a “Christian” - a child of God. We then begin our Christian walk by the use of our KNOWING. The problem is, it doesn’t work! We don’t seem to really act like this child of God that we are. Why?

We become frustrated and discouraged - we are at our wit's end. GOOD! Finally God has us exactly where He wants us - stuck with only one answer: living by faith. It seems that most of us do not really turn to God until we first come to the end of ourselves, until we learn to turn within. It‘s doubt and despair over KNOWING that are the seedbed to most faith.

The Holy Spirit continues the KNOWING process so that we really become aware of our true union relationship with the indwelling Christ.

It has been said about Moses that he lived 120 years. The first 40 years, he thought he was somebody. The next 40 years, he found out he was a nobody. The last 40 years of his life, he found out what God can do with a nobody!

It is much the same with everyone. Through the process of KNOWING, we come to think that we are somebody. But when living the life of a somebody doesn’t work out, we see ourself as a nobody, NOT KNOWING the answers. This is the place that God wants to bring everyone to. He wants us to trust Him to reveal the answers through our living relationship with Christ.
How often have you heard (and said) the words, “I KNOW that I am right!” And not only are we convinced that we are right, like Paul Hill we are also convinced that anyone taking a different position is automatically wrong.

The only alternative to a life based on reason and KNOWING is a life of NOT-KNOWING - a life of faith, a life of waiting on God in silence and listening, a life of walking in the Spirit. It‘s when you finally choose the faith walk, admitting that you do NOT KNOW, that “you ears will hear a word behind you, ‘This is the way, walk in it’, whenever you turn to the right or to the left” (Isa. 30:21).

There is a strange thing that happens at the point when we finally, somehow, manage to give up wrestling with matters that are too complex, too lofty, too wonderful for the human mind to understand. What happens is this: suddenly, miraculously, revelationally, we do understand!

For there is a knowledge that is beyond mere KNOWING. We can “know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19), and there is a “peace of God which transcends all understanding” (Phil. 4:7).

Many mature Christians have testified that the highest form of KNOWING and communicating with God consists simply in being with the Lord, in a state that is somehow beyond words, beyond images, beyond concepts. If this teaching sounds dangerous and extreme to us, it is because so much of the work of rational theology involves wrestling God out of the arena of the unknowable and reducing Him to propositions that the human mind can handle.

But isn’t the work of the Holy Spirit different? His work is to lead us out of ourselves, out of the stale confines of our minds, and into the realm of the spirit, to listen for either the thunder or the great silence of God. His work is to engage our souls in that most terrifying of all human ventures: TRUST.

Where there is full understanding, trust is not needed. Many, like myself, have had a compulsive need to comprehend everything, to create a sense of reasonable order where none is apparent. Yet why should we expect life to be reasonable? It is God who is sovereign, not human reason. While faith is not contrary to reason, it does greatly surpass it.

The Spirit must control the mind - and it is a choice to be made by us on a daily basis. As Paul puts it, “The mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). As this state is achieved, the result is that paragon of Christian maturity whom Paul calls “the spiritual man” (1 Cor. 2:15).

But you may say, “Wait a minute! Isn’t what you are proposing just exactly what Paul Hill did - follow what he thought God told him?” No, it is not. There is a process and a time-line of maturity involved in listening to the voice of God. There are steps involved along the way - criteria which must be met before trusting in God’s direction.

First, you must truly have called on Christ to be the Lord of your life and have a true conversion. Second, you must have the realization of Christ living in you. Third, you must have previously established a personal relationship with Christ within so that you KNOW His voice of direction from within you without a doubt. Satan has a voice too, but a history of personal contact with and trust in Christ will cause you to instantly recognize the difference. Many people hear “voices” telling them to do things but a spiritual history of previous awareness, relationship and trust will filter out the true voice of God through Christ.

It is apparent to me that Paul Hill did not go through one or all of these critical steps in trusting God.

Humans have never liked the idea of NOT KNOWING. When a blind man was brought to Jesus for healing, the disciples immediately asked the question: “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” The disciples still assumed that life was always the rational product of cause. and effect. But Jesus’ startling answer must have jarred them to reconsider, when He said, “No one sinned, but that God may be glorified.” Paul also stops a lot of our presumptuous questioning when he bluntly asks: “Shall the clay ask the Potter, ‘Why have You made me the way You have?” (See Romans 9:20).

A 14th century prayer classic, written anonymously in England, was entitled “The Cloud of Unknowing”. In that book the author teaches a form of prayer known as “contemplation”, in which a person stills his mind of thoughts,, words, and images, and simply purposes in faith to wait in silence on the presence of God within. It is the response to God’s call to “Be still and know that I am God.” Through this “unknowing”, we have a relationship with Christ and see the reality of our inner spiritual union.

Instead of all of our self-conscious efforts to be “good” and to learn more about God, we should learn to JUST BE WITH HIM and allow ourselves the luxury of being loved and possessed by Him. It is from the faith relationship and trust that we will form our true Christian KNOWING and beliefs which, in turn, will form our personal Christian rules and behaviors.

If Jesus Christ is our Lord, we must allow Him not only to inform our thinking, but to override it. If we are never prepared to take a step without a clear understanding of where we are going, it is not the Christian life. Mature life in the Spirit is more than “cause and effect”. It‘s more than increasing our KNOWING about God and life.

Life is meant to be a spiritual journey - from NOT-KNOWING to KNOWING and back to NOT-KNOWING; from being “know-nothings” to being “know-it-alls” to becoming people who TRUST IN CHRIST’S KNOW-HOW!

Life is an ongoing growth process in our awareness that it truly is no longer I who lives, but CHRIST WHO LIVES IN ME.

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